The United Nations Security Council called for an "immediate ceasefire" Monday as the Palestinian death toll in an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip jumped to more than 500, Reuters reported, with the United States dictating a direct role in efforts to secure a ceasefire in the escalating civilian bloodshed.
A fresh air strike on Monday morning killed a family of 28, including seven children, after a weekend of incessant shelling by land, sea and air sent thousands of terrified civilians fleeing their homes, Agence France-Presse reported. In one Israeli strike, 25 people were buried under the rubble of a home in the southern town of Khan Younis, including 24 from the same family. "Twenty-five people!" said family member Sabri Abu Jamea. "Doesn't this indicate that Israel is ruthless? Are we the liars? The evidence is here in the morgue refrigerators. The evidence is in the refrigerators."
Despite growing calls for a halt to end the deadliest conflict between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers in just over five years, violence raged on, with Israel claiming it had killed 10 militants who had tunneled across the border from Gaza, while Palestinian officials accused the Israeli army of shelling a Al-Aqsa hospital in the central Gaza Strip, killing four people and wounding 70.
As cross-border fighting continued unabated elsewhere, a man was killed in a strike on a motorbike, taking the Palestinian death toll to 502 as the Israeli offensive entered its 14th day, medics said. Many of the more than 150 Palestinians killed on Sunday - the bloodiest day of fighting in Gaza in years - were women and children, Gaza's emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
In one of the strikes, nine members of a single family were killed in Gaza City, he said. In another, 10 people of a family were killed in the southern Gaza Strip, CBS News reported.
The Islamist group Hamas, which inflicted the biggest single loss on Israeli forces in eight years when it killed 13 soldiers in Gaza on Sunday, refused to lay down its arms until a series of demands were met, including an end to a blockade imposed on the territory by both Israel and Egypt. "The world must understand that Gaza has decided to end the blockade by its blood and its heroism," deputy Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in a televised address.
Meanwhile, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were heading to Cairo on Monday to try to secure an end to hostilities, a day after Kerry was caught by an open microphone saying sarcastically that the Israeli assault was "a hell of a pinpoint operation."
Speaking in Washington, President Barack Obama said he was increasingly worried by the conflict. "We have serious concerns about the rising number of Palestinian civilian deaths and the loss of Israeli lives, and that is why it now has to be our focus and the focus of the international community to bring about a ceasefire," he told reporters at the White House.
Non-stop attacks lifted the Palestinian death toll to 518, including almost 100 children, since fighting started on July 8, Gaza health officials said. Israel said 18 of its soldiers have also died along with two civilians, Reuters reported.
